For one thing, Buick is global, said Jim Farley, Ford's global marketing and sales czar, who also was at the dinner.

The Buick Verano's engineering was done in China. It has been on sale there for several months. Buick is just squeezing some extra sales from it by offering it here.

The Millennial generation -- often defined as those people born between the late 1970s and the early 1990s -- will eventually want fun-to-drive, fuel-efficient luxury vehicles, Farley said. Lincoln will offer that with a promised compact vehicle due by 2014.

In fact, Ford has promised Lincoln seven new or improved vehicles by 2014.

ATTENTION COMMENTERS: Over the last few months, Automotive News has monitored a significant increase in the number of personal attacks and abusive comments on our site. We encourage our readers to voice their opinions and argue their points. We expect disagreement. We do not expect our readers to turn on each other. We will be aggressively deleting all comments that personally attack another poster, or an article author, even if the comment is otherwise a well-argued observation. If we see repeated behavior, we will ban the commenter. Please help us maintain a civil level of discourse.